In this paper, we analyze content sharing between news sources in the
alternative and mainstream media using a dataset of 713K articles and 194
sources. We find that content sharing happens in tightly formed communities,
and these communities represent relatively homogeneous portions of the media
landscape. Through a mix-method analysis, we find several primary content
sharing behaviors. First, we find that the vast majority of shared articles are
only shared with similar news sources (i.e. same community). Second, we find
that despite these echo-chambers of sharing, specific sources, such as The
Drudge Report, mix content from both mainstream and conspiracy communities.
Third, we show that while these differing communities do not always share news
articles, they do report on the same events, but often with competing and
counter-narratives. Overall, we find that the news is homogeneous within
communities and diverse in between, creating different spirals of sameness.

本研究基于共 713,000 篇文章和 194 个来源的数据，分析了另类和主流媒体之间的内容共享。研究发现，这种内容共享发生在紧密形成的社区中，并且这些社区代表着媒体格局的相对同质性部分。尽管存在内容沉淀现象，特定来源如 The Drudge Report 混合来自主流和阴谋社区的内容。同时，虽然这些不同社区不总是分享新闻文章，但他们常常以竞争性和相互矛盾的叙事方式报道同一事件。总体而言，我们发现新闻在社区内是同质性的，在社区间则是多样的，营造着不同的同质化循环。

异曲同工的不同：主流和另类媒体内容分享的研究

Different Spirals of Sameness: A Study of Content Sharing in Mainstream  and Alternative Media

Echo chambers, i.e., situations where one is exposed only to opinions that
agree with their own, are an increasing concern for the political discourse in
many democratic countries. This paper studies the phenomenon of political echo
chambers on social media. We identify the two components in the phenomenon: the
opinion that is shared ('echo'), and the place that allows its exposure
('chamber' --- the social network), and examine closely at how these two
components interact. We define a production and consumption measure for
social-media users, which captures the political leaning of the content shared
and received by them. By comparing the two, we find that Twitter users are, to
a large degree, exposed to political opinions that agree with their own. We
also find that users who try to bridge the echo chambers, by sharing content
with diverse leaning, have to pay a 'price of bipartisanship' in terms of their
network centrality and content appreciation. In addition, we study the role of
'gatekeepers', users who consume content with diverse leaning but produce
partisan content (with a single-sided leaning), in the formation of echo
chambers. Finally, we apply these findings to the task of predicting partisans
and gatekeepers from social and content features. While partisan users turn out
relatively easy to identify, gatekeepers prove to be more challenging.

本文研究了社交媒体上的政见共鸣箱现象，通过比较社交媒体用户分享和接收内容的政治倾向度量，发现 Twitter 用户往往暴露于认同自己政见的政治观点之中，并探讨了试图打破共鸣箱的网络中介者的困境与关键色彩，同时研究了消费多元观点但产出片面政治观点的 “关键人物” 在共鸣箱形成中的作用，并应用了这些发现来预测社交媒体上的分裂者和关键人物。